Monday, January 01, 2007

Moving from 2006 to 2007

In 2006 I did a lot research on elearning, instructional technology, and psychology of learning. After much deliberation I came to the conclusion that learning is all about taking in new information, reflecting upon it, practicing it, conversing with others and then sharing. This entire process not only strengthens the learners own understanding of a topic, but also helps the community by knowledge sharing.

Learning can be very effective when done as a conversation, rather than a monologue (with either a teacher or a book). Which is why some experts suggest that you should talk to your book while learning, by making notes. Having a conversation helps the learners derive knowledge rather than just having it spoonfed to them.

New media technology gives us an entire new way to have these conversations, by blogging and podcasting. I have written here, and here about the benefits of blogging. In the spirit of enabling learning through conversations, I created a website - Adaptive Learning Solutions, in Jne 2006. For most of 2006, I posted articles on learning and how the internet can be leveraged for information and to create a personal learning environment. This was to create a base for the readers to understand how to effectively use the net. Now the time has come to focus on posts for the people I set out to help - senior students of computer science and fresh employees working in software development. In 2007 you will mainly see articles that explain best practices in software design and development in Java. This will be the primary focus, however I will from time to time also write about Agile methodologies, and extreme programming. I hope to publish at least 2 posts every week and even start a screencast, which will be a video of a program being written in Eclipse, while I explain principles and best practices of software development.

All of you who would like to improve your software development skills are welcome to visit the website, and post your questions, comments, and suggestions.

5 comments:

Your initiative of e-learning is unique and encouraging. It will definitely give developers and naïve programmers a better way to deal with programming practices .Still Software Engineering need a better approach to deal with the software life cycle. Reluctance and Dissatisfaction are prevalent among customers due to rise in expectation from their side. India has strategic advantage as far as the skilled labor is concerned but we are still lagging behind due to non availability of sufficient educational resources. Media technology can be the most effective way to deal with this problem. Blogs, podcasts, Utube are the new buzzwords in the media and they are taking the concept of e-learning to a new height but in country like India poor Infrastructure (Bandwidth , Availability of Computer etc.) is a big force to deal with. Country of one billion doesn’t require One more IIT but it requires one thousand ITIs. As we all know that alone Government can’t deal with this painstaking task so concepts of self learning and e-learning are the most optimized way to handle it. It will undeniably revolutionize the whole concept of education in India also.

Parag sir your insight on the new avenues of learning which rises from new technologies is quiet interesting. I have always been of the opnion that if u can't share/write about what you are doing, there is no point in doing that job. And i am going to be in the technical field, though towards .Net, but best practices don't differ so looking forward to reading your blog in the coming year.Happy New Year to you too...

Neeraj,The collaborative possibilities of the Internet have created a flat open classroom. The IITs, Harvards, and IIMs, will continue to impart world class education, but world class education will no longer be limited to those who are admitted to these institutes.

The Internet makes information as well as interaction available to every netizen. Every person will have access to a world class education, if they have enough discipline and drive.

Offcourse infrastructure issues like power and bandwidth may create some roadblocks, but these are the far simpler to overcome now.